Thanks Delhi - Really!

So farewell Delhi and, on the whole, thank you. Was it the best Commonwealth Games ever? Not by a distance. But it never was going to be.

Give a developing country an event such as a Commonwealths or an Olympics and you will experience problems and, at times, chaotic organisation, but if sport wants to globalize, and if the Commonwealth Games wishes to embrace the largest country in the Commonwealth, then be prepared for problems.

India did not help itself. A seven year timeline to deliver became a desperate, eleventh-hour rush as the locals refused to take international advice, and murmurings of corruption continue unabated. Comments from the likes of the Games Organising Committee's Chairman, Suresh Kalmadi, who refused to admit that there was much, if anything wrong with the Games, and from Secretary General Lalit Bhanot, whose reaction to the inhabitable athletes' village was to proclaim that western standards of hygiene were different to the sub-continent hardly helped matters either, let alone the collapsing bridges, moving blocks, cloudy water in the pool, falling rugby scoreboards and so on.

Add in factors that were not Delhi's fault, such as the withdrawal of so many top-class athletes, the outbreak of Dengue Fever and the belated wave of positive dope tests and not all memories from the 19th Commonwealth Games will be happy ones.

But still the juices flowed as the baton was handed over to Glasgow for 2014 and India bade farewell last night. Still the sporting memories emerged - Adlington, Daley, Tancock, Goddard, young Zoe Smith, Nathan Robertson, the archers and the shooters, plus the Indian hockey team, the Indian women 400 metres relay team and so on - and still the Games go on, wiser and better for the experience.

Glasgow will go well, of that you can be sure, and it just may be that the last two weeks have seen the emergence of a new power in sport - India!